Nor does he remind Mick to take his morning medicine—-which he remembered to do—-and to eat breakfast with it. Which he did not.
Mick feels increasingly queasy as he walks down last stretch of Battlefield Road to school, but at least the sun is shining today. He arrives even before the morning driver’s ed kids, when the school is nearly deserted. The boiler system hasn’t yet kicked into overdrive in the main building, a three--story brick structure that everyone refers to as the sweatbox.
He scours the entire school for locales where he can plant clues for his Secret Santa treasure hunt—-not just the main building, which houses the administrative offices, the auditorium, and gym, but also the classrooms and science and computer labs in the one--story, flat--roofed modern wings that were built in the sixties when the village was still booming.
Then, sitting at a table in the library alongside a bunch of kids he barely knows—-the types who get to school early to study—-he writes the notes in block letters.
The first one, which he pushes through the vents on Brianna’s locker door, reads Look behind the Toys for Tots flyer on the lobby bulletin board.
Behind the Toys for Tots flyer, he hides a second note instructing her to go to Mrs. Miller’s room and open The Great Gatsby to a certain page.
Mrs. Miller is the English teacher Brianna has for second period English. Mick never bothered to read Gatsby when it was assigned last year, but he quickly flips through Mrs. Miller’s copy this morning and finds a romantic scene about a kiss. He imagines kissing Brianna the way the guy in the book kisses some girl named Daisy: “At his lips’ touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”
And so it goes, until he’s perfectly set the stage for Brianna’s discovery of his day two gift, another bead charm for the Trinkettes bracelet she’s going to get on Friday. He conceals it in the most secure spot he can find in the school on such short notice: behind the snack--sized bags of prunes in the cafeteria. He does so quickly, his empty upset stomach assaulted by the smell of something saucy simmering in the adjacent kitchen, and grabs a banana on the way out.
Steals a banana, actually. But there’s no one manning the register at this hour and he’s going to barf if he doesn’t eat something, and it’s not going to be prunes. Part of the new Wholesome & Hearty school lunch plan, they aren’t exactly a big hit with the student body. Nor are they the least bit romantic. But at least there’s zero chance that anyone is going to buy a bag with lunch today and stumble across the little gift box.
It seems like a great plan, and he could probably pull it off, but there’s one major hitch.
Brianna is absent from school today.
The young woman who turned up dead—-and bald—-on Sunday morning was a twenty--eight-year--old aspiring songwriter named Julia Sexton.
Sully had been sure of that even before her distraught parents, fresh off a plane from Saint Louis, identified her an hour ago at the morgue. According to her former roommate, who reported her missing last night, she’d had long red hair and a ladybug tattoo just beneath her right collarbone.
Overnight, Sully and Stockton questioned the roommate, a -couple of other friends, and an ex--boyfriend. According to them, Julia didn’t have an enemy in the world, with the possible exception of her landlord, who wasn’t thrilled about her unpaid December rent. But he lives in California and has a pretty airtight alibi.
“I was at the Lakers game Saturday night,” he told them. “If you don’t believe me, look at the game tape. You can see me right behind Leonardo DiCaprio in the courtside seats.”
They looked. They saw. They were privately impressed.